“We killed a large Rattle snake & a water snake which had another in it almost as large as itself,” Capt. Christopher French, a member of Col. James Grant’s expedition against the Cherokee, marveled in his journal, May 19, 1761.

He did not seem to see the snake’s rapaciousness as any kind of a sign.

Grant’s army of over 2,000 troops was in the Lake Keowee area, near present-day Clemson. Capt. French and the fleet he’d been with had left the Jersey coast on Dec. 30, 1760, arrived in Charles Town on Jan. 6, 1761, and anchored on Jan. 9.

The expedition mission was to vanquish the Cherokee, who’d thoroughly repulsed Col. Archibald Montgomery’s force in June 1760. By that time, an Anglo-Cherokee alliance had gone bad and escalated into an all-out Anglo-Cherokee war.

The joint fort at Prince George had become the place where the British had imprisoned a delegation of 32 chiefs and executed 29 of them after the fort’s commander had been killed; and where the Cherokee had eventually starved the British out.

“I had orders to put every soul to death,” French would write on June 10, 1761, after surviving the battle of Cowhowee (near present-day Otto) and heading toward Echoy (near present-day Brasstown), the site of Montgomery’s last stand.

The waiting time

Back in Charles Town, Grant’s mission took a back seat as baggage delivery problems delayed departure two months and the soldiers turned their attention to city life. The “South Carolina Gazette” reported on March 21, 1861 that the officers and men had put on a comedy and farce for the citizens.

There were other entertainments, French revealed: a war dance by “King Higler” and 26 of his Catawba Nation; and a series of masques by a “Dutch” troupe about a madman who claimed to be God, a Devil who wanted to be killed, and people who smothered the devil between two mattresses, “saying he was come from the Moon & must, consequently, be very cold.”

The troupe was a group of Protestant radicals during the Methodist Great Awakening.

“These ‘New Lights or the Gifted Brethren,’ who ‘pretend to Inspiration,’” Anglican minister Charles Woodmason wrote in his journal, “now infest the whole Back County,” and were spreading.

On March 20, 1761, Grant’s army finally marched. About 2,000 royals, colonials, anti-Cherokee Indians, and African-American laborers-“pioneers,” French called them-made it to Monk’s Corner in two days. They stayed 24, waiting out heavy rains.

Soldiers began to desert, and not just the colonials. Poor farmers-in-arms seeking happiness found the landscape enchanting; and the natives, peaceful if one respected them. They risked their lives to grasp a dream.

“Halted & try’d seven Men for Desertion,” French noted on April 17. “They were found guilty and six of them condemned to dye.”

The army marched on, reaching the Congaree River, north of present-day Lake Marion, on April 22.

“Discipline problems inherited from the Congaree camp,” Tom Hatley notes in his book, “The Dividing Paths,” “led to the desertion of nearly 40 percent of the Carolina regiment by the time it reached Ninety-Six.”

Ninety-Six had been the British trading post at the Cherokee border, and became a fortified town.

Many sources say the place name came from the distance in miles to Keowee; or the 96 streams an Indian princess crossed to reach a British boyfriend during the Anglo-Cherokee War.

The problem is, the distance doesn’t match up and the name existed before the war.

While the British were moving toward Cherokee villages, torch in hand, negotiations were going on.

Lt. Lacklan McIntosh, criticized “by his peers for his humane treatment of the Cherokees,” according to the Summer 1977 issue of the “Journal of Cherokee Studies,” freed 113 Cherokees in exchange for “18 Bullocks; & several Peace Talks.”

At the same time Chickasaws working with the British did what the British were loath to do: they killed Cherokee citizens and prisoners and claimed scalps.

On May 3, 1761, Alexander Monypenny, Grant’s executive officer, reported that when Tistoe, one of seven Cherokee Chiefs who’d visited King George II in 1730, had left home for business, Chickasaws had attacked his wife and house boy.

Last ditch appeal

Attakullakulla, another one of the chiefs who’d met the king, came to speak with Grant at Fort Prince George on May 22, and waited five days for the British Army’s arrival.

The chief’s name-Ada-gal’kala in the Cherokee transcription-translated as “Little Carpenter” and referred to his deal-making prowess. He was hoping to buy time and forge a peace at the last minute.

He was familiar with British perfidy. At age 19 in London, he’d signed a trade agreement with the King, which, he and the other chiefs discovered after they’d gotten a translation, ceded all of Carolina.

“At last,” Robert Conley relates in his book, “A Cherokee Encyclopedia,” the chiefs “decided that because they had no right to cede the lands anyway, the agreement could not be binding.”

Off to the side, a British soldier carved maps and images into a powder horn in scrimshaw fashion. Ships dock, roads wend, and deer prance in the carver’s nostalgic vision.

The horn is now in the possession of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee.

An alternate picture of the moment in history might have been: carpenters making packsaddles, tailors making bags, wagons being outfitted, a fort being built for wagons and stores left behind, and about 60 Cherokees surrendering to the fort to gain refuge from the coming scourge.

And it was coming.

Ada-gal’kala made a strong case about his loyalty. He’d been waging war against the French, and brought scalps. He’d turned away other Indian nations that wanted to have him join in fighting the British.

However, another leading Cherokee chief, Oconostota (Ogan’sto), continued his attacks, and sided with the French. Grant would not be dissuaded from going from Cherokee town to town, burning homes, granaries and crops, and bringing along predators with him.

On June 7, Grant, and his now 2,828 men advanced toward Cherokee country. From June 10, when they eradicated Echoy, to June 28, when they leveled Elajoy (near present-day Maryville, Tenn.), Grant’s army destroyed 17 towns, burning over 1,500 acres of corn and orchards and sending homeless families into the mountains.

Ogan’sto sued for peace, but wouldn’t go in person to meet Grant.

Ada-gal’kala went instead. Peace was achieved with South Carolina in December 1761.

Fourteen years later, Conley recounts, “Ogan’sto joined with Ada-gal’kala in making the sale to the Transylvania Company of much of what is now Tennessee and Kentucky, thereby angering Dragging Canoe and other younger Cherokee men.”

The “Journal of Cherokee Studies,” previously cited, concludes its republication of the journals of French and Monypenny with a statement by Francis Marion, a lieutenant under Grant who would become known as the Revolutionary War patriot, “Swamp Fox.”

“We proceeded, by General Grant’s orders, to burn the Indian cabins,” Marion recollected. “Some of the men seemed to enjoy this cruel work, laughing heartily at the flames, but to me it appeared a shocking sight. “When we came,” Marion continued, “to cut down the fields of corn, I could scarcely refrain from tears.”

Marion saw children’s footprints, and imagined them returning to their village, asking their mothers, “Who did this,” and getting the reply, “The white people did it-the Christians did it!”

“Thus for cursed mammon’s sake, the followers of Christ have sowed the selfish tares of hate in the bosoms of even Pagan children,” Swamp Fox charged.

Rob Neufeld writes the weekly “Visiting Our Past” column for the Citizen-Times. He is the author of books on history and literature, and manages the WNC book and heritage website, “The Read on WNC.” Follow him on Twitter @WNC_chronicler; email him at RNeufeld@charter.net; call 828-505-1973.

Portrait of Standing Turkey (Kanagatoga), chief at Chota (south of present-day Maryville), painting by Francis Parsons, 1762, held at the Smithsonian Institution.